Opponent: Professor

• Main Authors: Heikki Kynäslahti, Tapio Varis
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Kilpisjärvi
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.109.2093; http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/julkaisut/kas/opett/vk/kynaslahti/actlocal.pdf

This research is about a small village school participating in an inter-institutional electronic network of schools using information and communication technologies in the context of the Kilpisjärvi project 1994 to 1997. The project concerned the establishment of the lower secondary school in the Kilpisjärvi village. The school was linked with a network which also included the Teacher Training school, both the primary school and the lower secondary school, and the Ruskela primary school. The perspective in this ethnographic research is that of the people in Kilpisjärvi. The background is based on the media educational view according to which people are active actants both in the environments which information and communication technologies create and in the nexus of local and non-local items. Education is, partly, regarded as a deterritorialised phenomenon that has transcended terrafirma. The concept of ‘eduscape ’ is used in this context. The virtual classroom concept is elaborated in the terms of virtuality. Virtuality, in turn, is understood as a phenomenon which includes the aspect of ‘as-if-real ’ and that of possible worlds. The classroom of the Kilpisjärvi project in which two physically